


Observers

by fidelishaereticus



Series: Wittenberg, or: Hamlet the Weird Prince of Denmark and Stealthmaster Horatio [8]
Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Gen, M/M, hamlet is TOTALLY NOT A CEEPER OK??, horatio is fae pass it on, i use 'he' but everyone here is more or less agender, in which the parties of our ship continue to circle one another indefinitely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 06:45:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12030387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fidelishaereticus/pseuds/fidelishaereticus
Summary: Hamlet goes for a walk in the gathering snow outside of Wittenberg, and stumbles upon Horatio in an unexpected place. As per usual, he has a lot of thoughts.





	Observers

_But surely,_ thought the student, _even Horatio . . ._

He was picking his way meditatively through the sparse descent of the first snow.

He stopped. Having passed beyond the city’s walls, he had stumbled upon one of the occasional brooks that fed into the river Elbe, which served as a greater and more distinctive border between the town and the countryside beyond. Although its rocky bed had begun to harden a little around the edges, the water still flowed freely through the centre, and its voice was clear and bright against the muffled soundscape. Apart from that, the only other noise was the scarce-perceptible tapping of the individual flakes as they touched upon the leaves of a nearby tree. The snow thickened, but it did not yet stick.

Resuming his walk, the student parted ways with the little stream to direct his path towards the bridge.

 _Surely,_ he thought, _even Horatio would note from time to time this veiled quality, this faint envelope around the world?_

He was too intelligent, too perceptive not to.

That stream, for example.

That rock---unsheathed before the collecting sky---was exactly what it appeared to be. And yet at the same time not: not at all. Just as ‘even’ always seemed so apt a qualifier for Horatio’s inclusion, as if he were in all cases an assumed outlier, and yet not necessarily in the way that one might first have taken him to be.

The analysis fell something short of coherent. So completely could the meaning be washed out of a phrase, that in the end one was left holding nothing at all of it in one’s hands. Only the gesture, the elusive aptness of the string of words first formed---a thought laid bare before the world---now transparent since the wind had gotten into them (`Surely, even Horatio…’).

Again, he stopped short. There, perched on a rock overlooking the river not twenty feet away from him: a figure, faced away out over the whitening fields. It was cloaked and hooded in such a manner as to render identification impossible from behind, and yet . . . that cloak. It was of a rather peculiar cut, was it not? A suspicious and near imperceptible grin began to take possession of Hamlet’s features: he resumed his approach, redirecting it into the little grove of trees and brambles just before the figure on the rock, taking special care to silence his footfalls. Still the snow veiled him. That, or the limitations of Hamlet’s own eyesight which, while not necessarily poor, had of late been compromised through application at odd hours to the handiwork of a certain anonymous scribe, notorious for his exceptionally stinting use of page-space. He crept closer. Just then the figure turned its head, opening the line of vision: Hamlet pressed himself quickly against the back of a tree to escape detection, but not before recognizing the face and nearly laughing aloud at the coincidence. By Jove, it _was_ him: the very man! Really, how could he have forgotten that silly cloak? He made to call out a greeting---perhaps a little louder and sharper than necessary (enough to give him a start though not so much as to topple him from his perch altogether)---but at the last restrained himself. No. He did not want to end this just yet: he was having fun. This man, who had hitherto been so assiduously observing _him ---_ that poor, quiet scholar who had all but outwitted him the other day(1)\---this man had no idea that _he_ was now in turn subject to observation. The thought was somehow deeply amusing to Hamlet.

A wind picked up briefly (Southerly?), and a thin film of snow was swept from the ground into a little whirlwind of animation. Hamlet found himself fancying, then---much as he had with sundry inanimates throughout his childhood---that the little cloud of snow was alive, and that its movement was a gesture . . . not necessarily to him _,_ but to someone, or some _thing._ As if it were speaking, and with a language he had no confidence in his ability to decipher. All the same, it was a gesture he recognized, not only because he grasped something of the tone, but also because he felt it had been offered him before: a faint shift within the recesses of his memory. Although he could not hit upon the source directly, the propagations of the disturbance put him distinctly in mind of wanderings through winters past. To Hamlet, each season hailed in a unique landscape, and over the years his imagination had populated the diverse worlds with a rotating cast of characters and associations, each of which he would greet---at the turn of the seasons---with the ritual of a solitary meander, generally through the woods outside of Elsinore. Though he appreciated each in its way, he had always particularly welcomed the host of winter: it invited him out even as it drove others in. Snow was ever friend to the man seeking solitude.

Unless, of course, that man should prove desirous of both shelter _and_ solitude, in which case it would likely have the opposite effect. For the prince, of course, this more common reality had seldom impinged upon his person: should he, in the winter months, ever find himself inclined towards a more domestic solitude, he had an abundance of rooms at his disposal in which he could light a fire and effectively seclude himself away fro m the hibernating masses, at least until some lesson or obligation should summon him away. No, the fact that snow was not a great friend to man in general had never yet been much of a concern to Hamlet, for his birth and circumstance had so graced him that he had not encountered significant cause to fear the cold.

Glancing again at the figure on the rock, Hamlet wondered: had _he_? It was clear enough that he did not hail from any opulent abundance of rooms, but . . . what of even a more modest buffer between himself and a practical concern at the onset of the darker season? Certainly, he was no gentry, but he was remarkably well-read. A man at the mercy of the elements did not, generally, have the time or resources to acquire such a thorough education. So what was he?

It was then, in the midst of these musings, that the particular image at the source of his earlier half-memory revealed itself in full: a clearing, that same little whirlwind, and a bird: magnificent and alone, perched upon the remnants of a fallen tree. Though it appeared now in his mind’s eye as clearly as if it were again before him, he could still not tell what kind of bird: either the power of the memory had momentarily robbed him of all knowledge accumulated since that instance (he had been a child at the time), or knowledge of this particular species evaded him still. Some kind of heron was his best guess, and coal black in colour. Most philosophers held that beasts did not have souls as men did. Hamlet did not take particular exception to this teaching, yet it had seemed to him then that the bird had been very much a creature like himself, and that inside its breast there beat a strange and furious little heart that was not his, and yet which served as a kind of parable for his own.

Now, as then, the little gesture of the wind, together with the whole---a lone figure: a bird, a man---was not so much a statement as a _key_. A hint, a kind of reference for understanding. Such a gesture could not reliably be captured in translation, because it had little to do with semantics and everything to do with syntax or, or better yet, intimation (allegory, even) _:_ what words meant between themselves; what they whispered to each other in the dark. Take that little phrase he had dreamt up earlier (‘Surely, even Horatio . . .’): the words themselves were not the substance, but rather a frame, a window through which he could examine more clearly that which he sought to understand. Stare at the words themselves and one had nothing indeed; look at Horatio, and one got nowhere: better to look where he was looking, or catch him from the corner of the eye, through a shuttered glance, flitting off the chart of things. It was not justice, to confine him otherwise, as if he were mere image and that image filtered through the frame of this one world contained a soul.

But then, was that not true of all men, to some degree? Hamlet was in part inclined to conclude it thus, and yet that was only a trite summary of what he had discovered: surely he would later be well able to recount to himself an instance of having looked through a phrase as through a window, but he could hardly begin to put back _into_ words what it was he had seen through that window. This glimpse, or this way of glimpsing, was _associated with_ but could hardly be confined to the instance of ‘Horatio’. It was prior to him: more immediately the bird, the rock, the stream---the gesture of the snow---the impression that all these things _spoke_. And Horatio . . . Horatio was a phenomenon explained by this principle, or perhaps merely a reminder that such a language existed, because Horation knew---Hamlet was suddenly quite certain---this being _knew:_ he perceived these things as well as or better than did Hamlet himself. Better, certainly. Though, sure, he could be nothing so rude as a translator of this language. No, this was a study he undertook alone, and on foreign terms: one who laid the evidence on the table and waited quietly for conclusions to emerge. But---and once more he returned to the question---what was it that he wanted, in this practice? What was his argument, his intent? Did he _want_ conclusions to emerge, or was he perfectly objective? Did he, in his own way, encourage . . ? Or did he _merely_ watch?

Yes, that was why, whatever way one looked at it, Horatio required special consideration. At times he seemed scarcely alive: his skin was deathly pale, and he had been known to remain in one place for unnaturally long installments of time, to all appearance without break. On account of this he had indeed become something of a fixture in the library and, to those who noted him, an object of some speculation. Of course, such behavior was to be expected of certain religious men, but its manifestation in Horatio was different somehow, for being more individually or unconsciously motivated. Just as an old man’s spirit seemed to hover on the fringe of this world in anticipation of its passage, so did Horatio’s, as if he were a shell inhabited by a ghost: an old soul within a young man’s body. In and of itself this was not necessarily uncommon. One came across the sort often enough: slight, inconsequential beings to whom the world paid little heed (they flickered out quickly the moment it did). Any explanation attempted from this principle alone, however, would prove incomplete. True, on the surface Horatio could be assessed easily enough in terms of lack: the withered husk of a being rather than the thing itself, having at his disposal only half the reserves of human vitality that most men had at hand to propel themselves about the world. Yet now it was is if Hamlet had stumbled upon the other side of that argument: a remote chamber of the mind, hidden behind a faded glass . . . Beheld now through the snow, Horatio’s existence made a different sort of sense. It attained a kind of perpetuity, a kind of separateness that was not unlike immortality. From here, it became clear that he was only less than human because he was more of _something else_ . . .

That something, Hamlet felt, would forever evade him. Not for lack of perception on his part, but rather because it was out of bounds entirely. No argument, no philosophy, no force could ever touch it: it would slip through words and fingers as easily as air slips through a shroud.

Another thought presented itself to Hamlet then, quite suddenly. His pulse beat at it; he caught his breath.

 _If he ever belongs to anyone,_ ran the thought, _it will be me._

The prince watched the ghost and the ghost watched the sky: a lone figure, fey...

_And yet I will never have him._

Hamlet fell back one quiet pace. He shook his head as if to clear it, and a little rain of snow fell from his hair: it was collecting now. _Well_. _Best leave the sentinel to his watch._

He smiled to himself, softly, and passed on into the alien terrain.

**Author's Note:**

> (1) This was only Hamlet’s private opinion, and he had not given it voice at the time. Had anyone else been watching, they would likely not have concluded as much: any score Horatio had managed to mount against the prince he won well out of the explicit sphere.


End file.
